I’ve been up since 5.  

I cuddled Missy, considered getting out of bed, decided against it, read Facebook, read some spanking erotica, considered again, stayed in bed again, got a text from my friend and fellow writer Zorro Daddy, traded thoughts on illustrated erotica, and finally decided to get up.

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That’s a whole lot of stuff in a small amount of time.  A thought about Andrea struck me as I realized that.  The busyness of my life is carrying me along, like the swift current of a river.

 I cannot help but be caught in that current. The river has an origin that I can’t even remember. And it’s moving along towards the sea. Eventually, its water will mingle with and become more an indistinguishable part of a much larger body of water. 

Andrea, she’s like this sparkly pink fish, that jumped around a lot, made these big splashes, really dominated a good long leg of my river.   

But now she’s sped off to the sea.  Where I too, am headed, some day.  As much as I don’t want to move away from that part of the river, it’s not really possible.  I’m being swept along.

 It’s not a bad thing.  This river is filled with lovely experiences, wonderful people.  Yet still there’s this tendency in me to struggle, to try to remain where I was, to clutch at the past like a rock. 

But as Andrea said, that’s not what you do. You just keep swimming.

She’s right too. I realized when you swim along with the river, when you don’t fight it... that’s how you stay current.  

So there's this thing I've been doing since I was 13 years old. One morning, in the middle of the summer, when I woke up I felt the sunlight on my face, and the very first thing I thought to myself was this:

"Oh good, another one."

That is, another day to be alive.  Another day that I don't know how things are going to work out.  Maybe it'll be an amazing day, filled with joy and passion.  Maybe it will be a terrible day, that I'll be glad to see behind me when it's done.

I didn't have any remote idea just what sort of day it was going to be. But I was sure ready to find out.

The next day, I woke up. Same deal. And literally every single one after that.

I'm really not even sure why it started.  I can't even tell you the exact date. For my own convenience, and because I love my sister, I have set the date at her birthday, July 9th.

Going by that...

From and including: Monday, July 9, 1984

To and including: Sunday, October 23, 2016

Result: 11,795 days

It is 11,795 days from the start date to the end date, end date included

Or 32 years, 3 months, 15 days including the end date

It is, without exception the single longest enduring intentional practice of my life.

Of those 11,795 days some have been truly awful. There were days I was convinced that I wasn't going to be seeing the next day. There were days I didn't WANT to see it.

But each morning even after those sorts of days, I woke up feeling differently, feeling glad for the gift that is being alive.

Recently, my friend Matti has adopted the same practice. It's got me paying attention again to the value and power of this simple little thing I do.  We've been discussing it a lot, he and I, and I told him that maybe I'd make a hashtag out of it, start intentionally spreading it to others, encouraging folks to adopt the practice.

I can't decide between #ohgoodanotherone or maybe the more pithy and mysterious #OGAO.

(That last one reminds me of Oni Hartstein's #FDAU.  Go on, you ask her about it.)

What I do know is that I'm grateful for today. I'm grateful to be here. I'm grateful you read this, and that you're around too.

Time to go see exactly what this day has for me.